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Most laptop buyers put screen size and weight near the top of their list of goals. You want the biggest screen and the lightest weight. The Acer Swift Edge gives you a large and modern 16-inch 16:10 screen in a thin magnesium metal chassis that weighs about two and a half pounds and is less than half an inch thick. We haven’t seen a laptop that weighs less but has a bigger screen.
The 16-inch OLED panel with a sharp 4K resolution is a great feature that you should guard. The picture quality is great, with bright colors and great contrast between dark and light areas. The action is powered by an octa-core AMD Ryzen 7 6800U CPU and Radeon graphics that are built in. Together, these two parts can do some multimedia editing but are better for general home entertainment and office tasks.
Acer Swift Edge 16 Specifications
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Display | 16-inch Full HD IPS display |
| Processor | 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR4X RAM |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe SSD |
| Graphics | Intel Iris Xe graphics |
| Battery Life | Up to 14 hours |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 |
Design and Display
The Edge 16’s screen is the second thing you notice after how heavy it is. When you turn it on, the Acer logo shows up in a green color that is between “toxic waste” and “Tom Jones’ lawn.” It’s an HDR OLED, of course, with a 16:10 screen that’s close to 4K and 500 nits of brightness. It has all the colors in the DCI-P3 color space and is nice to look at in general.
The only problem with the screen is that it is very shiny. This could have been fixed with some kind of extra coating. Still, it’s bright enough to use in most lighting situations, and since it’s not a touchscreen, it won’t get covered in fingerprints. It does tend to gather dust, though. You can buy this laptop from its official website
Keyboard and Touchpad
It looks like an X1 Carbon that is even thinner. The keyboard and keyboard deck on the inside are also black, as is the lid. There is a simple Acer logo on the top edge of the lid, and another in the middle of the bottom rim below the screen. On the right side of the wrist rest, below the keyboard, there is a small Swift logo that is hard to see.
The Swift Edge looks like a business laptop that can do a lot of work, but it is very small. The laptop is a little thicker than half an inch and weighs just a little more than 2.5 pounds. We have never seen a 16-inch laptop weigh that much, not even close. The Acer Swift 3 weighs more than a pound more at 3.86 pounds.
Acer Swift Edge 16: Performance
The AMD Ryzen 7 6800U is the processor inside the Swift Edge 16. It has an eight-core Zen 3+ processor that can handle 16 threads at once. It runs at 2.7GHz with a boost clock of up to 4.7GHz and comes with a Radeon 680M GPU with 12 RDNA2 cores.
With 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, it’s a great all-around package that shouldn’t have any trouble with anything but heavy 3D games or rendering in high resolution. The U-series of AMD computers use the least amount of power, making them perfect for a portable.
Acer Swift Edge 16: Heat
It doesn’t appear that this machine produces a great deal of heat. After 15 minutes of streaming a 1080p film, the bottom of the Acer Swift Edge 16 only reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit, which is considerably below the 95-degree mark when we start to feel uncomfortable. The middle of the keyboard and the touchpad are at the same height of 85 degrees. Meanwhile, the temperature in the trunk’s center reached a blistering 95 degrees.
Acer Swift Edge 16: Battery Life
The 54Wh battery in the Acer Swift Edge charges at 65W. The maker says that one charge is good for 10.5 hours of watching videos or 8 hours of surfing the web. However, the MobileMark 2018 test, which was done by Acer engineers, shows that the battery only lasts 7.5 hours. In real life, though, the effect is still less impressive.
A 4K movie at 80% brightness for an hour “eats up” 20% of the battery. Normal use (surfing the web, using instant messaging, working on papers, etc.) at the same brightness level doesn’t use much less power. On average, you have to turn down the laptop’s lighting and load to get it to last longer than 5 hours.
Final Words
The Acer Swift Edge seems like a good product. The laptop has a great look, thanks in large part to how light and small it is. The way it’s put together is great, and the quality of the products is nice. The display is also a plus, because this 16-inch OLED screen is the best you can find. It will definitely help people who make content.
Acer Swift Edge 16 review: The good and The bad
The Good
- Expansive, beautiful display
- Surprisingly long battery life
The Bad
- No Windows Hello
FAQS
The Acer Swift Edge is easy to take on the train because it has a big enough screen to work and do other things on all day. Even better, the screen is a 4K OLED panel that shows a beautiful picture.
The Acer Swift 3 is reasonably priced for what it has to offer, and it comes in a sleek package that makes it a laptop you can take anywhere without getting strange looks. It’s not a laptop that will blow your mind in any way, but it does everything you’d expect it to do very well.